Sophisms of the Protectionists

by Frédéric Bastiat

I am perfectly sensible of the defect of my plan, or rather absence of plan. By attacking as I do, one by one, so many incoherent Sophisms, which clash, and then again often mingle with each other, I am conscious that I condemn myself to a disorderly and capricious struggle, and am exposed to perpetual repetitions.

I should certainly much prefer to state simply how things are, without troubling myself to contemplate the thousand aspects under which ignorance supposes them to be.... To lay down at once the laws under which society prospers or perishes, would be virtually to destroy at once all Sophisms. When Laplace described what, up to his time, was known of the movements of celestial bodies, he dissipated, without even naming them, all the astrological reveries of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Hindoos, much more certainly than he could have done by attempting to refute them directly, through innumerable volumes. Truth is one, and the work which expounds it is an imposing and durable edifice. Error is multiple, and of ephemereal nature. The work which combats it, cannot bear in itself a principle of greatness or of durability.

But if power, and perhaps opportunity, have been wanting to me, to enable me to proceed in the manner of Laplace and of Say, I still cannot but believe that the mode adopted by me has also its modest usefulness. It appears to me likewise to be well suited to the wants of the age, and to the broken moments which it is now the habit to snatch for study.

A treatise has without doubt an incontestable superiority. But it requires to be read, meditated, and understood. It addresses itself to the select few. Its mission is first to fix attention, and then to enlarge the circle of acquired knowledge.

A work which undertakes the refutation of vulgar prejudices, cannot have so high an aim. It aspires only to clear the way for the steps of Truth; to prepare the minds of men to receive her; to rectify public opinion, and to snatch from unworthy hands dangerous weapons which they misuse.

It is above all, in social economy, that this hand-to-hand struggle, this ever-reviving combat with popular errors, has a true practical utility.

Sciences might be arranged in two categories. Those of the first class whose application belongs only to particular professions, can be understood only by the learned; but the most ignorant may profit by their fruits. We may enjoy the comforts of a watch; we may be transported by locomotives or steamboats, although knowing nothing of mechanism and astronomy. We walk according to the laws of equilibrium, while entirely ignorant of them.

But there are sciences whose influence upon the public is proportioned only to the information of that public itself, and whose efficacy consists not in the accumulated knowledge of some few learned heads, but in that which has diffused itself into the reason of man in the aggregate. Such are morals, hygiene, social economy, and (in countries where men belong to themselves) political economy. Of these sciences Bentham might above all have said: "It is better to circulate, than to advance them." What does it profit us that a great man, even a God, should promulgate moral laws, if the minds of men, steeped in error, will constantly mistake vice for virtue, and virtue for vice? What does it benefit us that Smith, Say, and, according to Mr. de St. Chamans, political economists of every school, should have proclaimed the superiority in all commercial transactions, of liberty above restraint, if those who make laws, and for whom laws are made, are convinced of the contrary?

These sciences, which have very properly been named social, are again peculiar in this, that they, being of common application, no one will confess himself ignorant of them. If the object be to determine a question in chemistry or geometry, nobody pretends to have an innate knowledge of the science, or is ashamed to consult Mr. Thénard, or to seek information from the pages of Legendre or Bezout. But in the social sciences authorities are rarely acknowledged. As each individual daily acts upon his own notions whether right or wrong, of morals, hygiene, and economy; of politics, whether reasonable or absurd, each one thinks he has a right to prose, comment, decide, and dictate in these matters. Are you sick? There is not a good old woman in the country who is not ready to tell you the cause and the remedy of your sufferings. "It is from humors in the blood," says she, "you must be purged." But what are these humors, or are there any humors at all? On this subject she troubles herself but little. This good old woman comes into my mind, whenever I hear an attempt made to account for all the maladies of the social body, by some trivial form of words. It is superabundance of produce, tyranny of capital, industrial plethora, or other such nonsense, of which, it would be fortunate if we could say: Verba et voces prætereaque nihil, for these are errors from which fatal consequences follow.

From what precedes, the two following results may be deduced: 1st. That the social sciences, more than others, necessarily abound in Sophisms, because in their application, each individual consults only his own judgment and his own instincts. 2d. That in these sciences Sophisms are especially injurious, because they mislead opinion on a subject in which opinion is power—is law.